Governor Raghuram Rajan of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), India’s central bank, a trained electrical engineer, in a commentary with the Project Syndicate Monday, has strongly criticized the central banks of developed countries, pointing out that

In his commentary, Rajan said what he has in mind

Rajan, who in 2005 had warned about the growing risks in the financial system pursued by then-Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, at the time had proposed policies that would reduce such risks, at the Federal Reserve annual Jackson Hole conference. As a result, he was ridiculed by Larry Summers, who said the warnings were “misguided” and called Rajan a “Luddite.” At the time, Rajan was teaching at the University of Chicago. 

Douglas R. Oberhelman, Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc., extolled the benefits of President Xi’s New Silk Road, for his company, in an interview on CCTV America Monday. “The Belt and Road [is] made for Caterpillar,” he said. Pointing out that Caterpillar had participated in building the Three Gorges Dam, Oberhelman said that not only are Caterpillar heavy machines needed in construction all along the Belt and Road, but also other CAT products and services.

Caterpillar, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois, is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, as well as other lines, including farm machinery and diesel and gas engines, and diesel-electric locomotives. In recent years, sales have plunged—especially in the oil, gas, and resources sector, led by the collapse of the Transatlantic economy. Since December 2012, the company has had 39 consecutive months of decline in overall retail equipment sales. Last Fall, Caterpillar announced a two-year downsizing plan involving 20 plant closures and 10,000 lay-offs. So far, five plants are shut, and over 5,000 jobs eliminated.

However, spokesmen for the company are now stressing that there are vast new work and sales potentials for CAT in Eurasia. “Caterpillar Sees Opportunities for Growth in China’s Five-Year Plan,” was the headline on a March 14 Construction Equipment journal report on the view of Chen Qihua, chairman of Caterpillar China, from a Xinhua interview. “Cat suffered double-digit losses in 2015 in part due to China’s economic slowdown. But Chen says achieving China’s goal of a better economy by 2020 will provide Caterpillar with more opportunities, especially in the Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the Silk Road Rebuild Project.”

Meantime, the money-freaks on Wall Street—the megabanks and rating agencies—are debating how far to lower the prospects for CAT’s 2016 share values. 

A new undercover documentary revealing the horrors of the Saudi Arabian kingdom is due to air Tuesday evening on British television, and next week March 29 on PBS’s Frontline. The fascist royals (and Obama) would rather that you not see it.

Five bodies hang from a pole suspended aloft by two large cranes; a woman screams “I did not do it!” just as her head is chopped off; police brandish whips against women; blood runs thick in a public space nicknamed “Chop Chop Square.” Such are the images in “Saudi Arabia Uncovered,” captured by some courageous film makers — Hardcash Productions and Independent “ITV” (Channel 3) in Britain, in conjunction with the American PBS Television — using hidden cameras, bringing the brutality of Saudi Arabia, the closest ally of both the British and American regimes, to the light of day.

Also shown is the extremism of the schools and mosques — spewing hatred equally against Christian, Jew, and Shi’a Muslim — enforced by the thought police, the Orwellian “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” An article in Britain’s Daily Mail notes, “Chillingly, only two other movements in the world — the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic State in Syria and Iraq — have organizations with the same name.”

The Daily Mail article goes on to critique this strange “special relationship,” in terms which could apply equally to the Obama White House: “Yet Saudi Arabia remains one of Britain’s closest allies, not just in the Middle East but worldwide, as it has for nearly a century. We sell them arms. They sell us oil. The royal families of each country are close…. Our leaders conveniently overlook the truth about the desert kingdom.”

A demonstration led by economist Dr. Natalia Vitrenko was violently attacked on March 17 in a park in central Kiev, by the Civil Corps of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which is still allowed to receive U.S. money despite attempts in Congress to block such funding. Gathered for the rally to mark the 25th anniversary of a 1991 referendum in which the people of Ukraine, as well as republics of the Soviet Union, voted to preserve the U.S.S.R., were representatives of several political parties allied as the “Left Opposition.” Speakers included four former members of the Supreme Rada, the Parliament of post-1991 independent Ukraine.

Just shy of ten minutes into the rally, as Vitrenko was talking via loudspeaker about the devastation of Ukraine’s economy during the past two and a half decades, a squad of black-clad young men, some of them masked, charged at the rally and attempted to break it up. As the Left Opposition activists defended themselves, several were seriously injured. Two large stones were thrown at the speakers’ position next to a monument to Russia’s and Ukraine’s shared history, one landing close to Vitrenko in what security experts evaluate as an attempt to kill her. Back in 1999, at a point when Vitrenko was showing support of over 30% in opinion polls during her run for the Presidency of Ukraine, she survived a grenade attack on one of her campaign rallies.

The press service of Vitrenko’s party, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, reports that although proper notice had been given of the plan and schedule for the peaceful demonstration, there was no police presence and the police arrived only half an hour after being called during the attack. Vitrenko has filed a complaint, demanding that a criminal case be opened regarding the violent attempt to block the exercise of the rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

Ukrainian websites cite a release from the so-called Azov Civil Corps, taking credit for the attack. This is the paramilitary “guard” wing of the Azov Battalion, which is officially attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (national police) and has incorporated leaders and units of the fascist Right Sector group that was instrumental in the coup d’état—the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected President—in February 2014. Like several Ukrainian neo-fascist youth groups since 1991, including Right Sector’s predecessors the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later Svoboda) and Ukrainian Patriot, Azov flies the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol. The rampages of the Azov squadristi were featured in Paul Moreira’s film “Ukraine: The Masks of Revolution,” released in France earlier this year.

In July 2015 U.S. Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI) and Ted Yoho (R-FL) wrote an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill (H.R.2685), which would have limited “arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion.” James Carden, writing in The Nation of Jan. 14, 2016, noted that the amendment was passed by the House, but stripped from the bill before its final passage. Thus, the attackers who can be seen in the video of this incident, (short version), are part of an entity authorized to receive U.S. funding through official channels of aid to Ukraine.

The website www.dialog.ua reports that Azov Civil Corps leader Nazar Kravchenko called the attack justified, because the Left Opposition flags allegedly include “Soviet symbols,” which are now illegal in Ukraine, and was a “communist action,” such has also been outlawed. Kravchenko also lied that Vitrenko had fled the scene, whereas in fact she resumed her speech on economic policy, after the attackers had been driven off.

Speaking later during the rally, former MP Vladimir Marchenko demanded that U.S. and European leaders be confronted with what the forces they have backed are doing.

On Feb. 4, the left opposition issued a “Petition to the United Nations and Council of Europe Commissioners for Human Rights concerning the obstruction of the activities of opposition political parties and public organizations by the Ukrainian government, and need to start large-scale international verification of whether human rights and freedoms are being honored in Ukraine.” Its full text is available in English . 

With the Obama Administration’s Solicitor General defending legalized marijuana in an Amicus Curiae (friend of the court) brief, the Supreme Court today dismissed a lawsuit by Nebraska and Oklahoma against neighbor Colorado’s law that legalized marijuana. Nebraska and Oklahoma made a strong case that a flood of marijuana grown and/or sold in Colorado was overwhelming law enforcement in their states, creating a danger to the public, especially to young drug users.

The Obama Admnistration’s amicus brief says that Nebraska and Oklahoma have not “sufficiently alleged that Colorado has inflicted the sort of direct injury to their sovereign interests” that warrants a direct case before the Supreme Court (a seldom used measure that allows a state to bring a suit against another state directly to the Supreme Court), because they have only “alleged that third-party lawbreakers” are responsible for the drug trafficking.

However, Nebraska and Oklahoma included allegations that the law enforcement and political authorities of Colorado have been grossly lax in trying to stop the flow of drugs over its state borders into the other states.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a George Soros-funded operation, was gleeful over the Supreme Court decision, stating, “The refusal to hear this case is a big win for our movement, and another step towards ending the prohibition of marijuana for good.” The dopers also ask for for a “generous tax-deductible contribution” to help legalize marijuana throughout the U.S.A.